Wallingford-Swarthmore parents say their superintendent has put the well-ranked district ‘on a downslide’

Parents in the Wallingford-Swarthmore School District are demanding an evaluation — and in some cases, the ouster — of their superintendent, who they say has disrespected administrators and teachers and is threatening to undermine the highly ranked district.

Their campaign targeting Wagner Marseille has featured petitions, letters, and social media posts that began circulating before an explosive July school board meeting, when outcry erupted about Marseille’s leadership.

Critics say morale has deteriorated since the superintendent’s hiring in July 2021 — pointing to the recent departures of three administrators in as many months and an impasse over a new teachers’ contract, weeks before the school year begins. They have also raised financial concerns, accusing Marseille of excessive spending on administrative initiatives.

“This is a canary-in-a-coal-mine moment,” said Erin Allsman, a district parent who has asked the board to deny a contract extension for Marseille next year. “You don’t have this much upheaval at those levels without there being something significantly wrong with their experience. What are they dealing with behind closed doors?”

Based on numerous conversations with teachers and other parents, Allsman said, “Things seem to lead back to Dr. Marseille.”

Through a district spokesperson, Marseille — previously the superintendent in Cheltenham — did not respond to questions for this story. The school board also did not respond to questions, but referred a reporter to a statement to the community sent Monday acknowledging frustrations with district leadership.

“Organizational change often includes some level of challenge, frustration, or resistance, but it is clear that our current path is not serving our school district well or creating the kind of fully supportive environment that we need to thrive,” board president Kevin Henry and vice president Kelly Wachtman said in the statement. “It is time to reset.” They did not specify what would change.

At a July 22 school board meeting dominated by complaints about Marseille, the superintendent attributed the opposition to his push to quickly make changes in the district. “I am guilty of running a marathon at a sprinter’s pace,” he said.

A former staff member disputed that explanation. Marseille, according to the staff member — who requested anonymity to avoid jeopardizing future career prospects — pitted staff against each other, turning his goals into a competition. While Marseille was right to push for improvements, the staff member said, he ignored any need for consensus-building; his dismissive attitude showed in other ways, like passing staff in the hallway without saying hello.

» READ MORE: There’s a clash between parents and school officials in the affluent Wallingford-Swarthmore district over the reading curriculum

Erin Traverso, a parent of an entering sophomore, said teachers who retired last year “told me personally, they were retiring early because they didn’t want to deal with him anymore.”

“I just worry that the superintendent is alienating our teachers, to the point that we’re going to lose a lot of them,” she said.

There have been “rumblings” for years about Marseille, Traverso said, starting with his approach to assessing the district’s needs. Rather than meeting personally with teachers to determine what problems the district had, Traverso said, Marseille hired an outside consultant.

“To have some guy come in and make sweeping changes, and really discount and discredit all of the work these teachers do is really frustrating,” Traverso said.

(At the July board meeting, Marseille acknowledged there had been “an unprecedented number of audits and assessments” since his arrival, and that “there is no doubt, a significant compounding effect on staff.”)

Another parent, Alicia Styer, objected to financial decisions by Marseille — citing staff “learning journeys” to other schools, including a charter school in San Diego and a laboratory school affiliated with the University of Chicago. (A presentation by administrators to the school board in 2023 described the trips as a way “to gain a fresh perspective by immersing ourselves in promising places with eyes wide open, assumptions suspended, and deep curiosity.”)

She also noticed growth in the administrative budget; Marseille reorganized the district’s central office and hired an assistant superintendent for the first time. After that administrator left this spring, the board last month hired a new assistant superintendent from South Carolina, at a salary of nearly $20,000 more.

Styer said Marseille’s actions “just seemed like excessive spending,” especially when parents had identified other areas, like the high school counseling office, as needing more support.

But the opposition to Marseille was galvanized by the resignation last month of the Wallingford Elementary School principal, Gabriel Savage, who took a job as a principal in the Unionville-Chadds Ford School District.

A popular principal — one parent who called his departure a “huge, huge loss” drew a standing ovation at the July board meeting — Savage was the latest administrator to leave for a different district. In April, Wallingford-Swarthmore’s assistant superintendent, James Conley, was hired by the West Chester Area School District. The principal of Strath Haven High School, Greg Hilden, was hired in June as high school principal in the Chichester School District. Parents noted that Hilden took a pay cut with the new position — nearly $14,000, salary records show.

District officials say their administrative turnover isn’t out of the ordinary. They noted that Conley’s move was to a larger district, while Savage would have a shorter commute.

Reached by phone, Savage declined to comment, as did Hilden. Conley did not respond to a request for comment.

Parents have drawn their own conclusions. “I just called BS,” said Allsman, whose letter to the board faulted Marseille’s “tyrannical management style,” citing “first-party accounts of aggressive and hostile language.”

She declined to provide examples of those allegations, but said she had heard “reports of demanding results that can’t necessarily be achieved.”

When Marseille took over in 2021, “I personally was excited to have an individual with his background, both personally and professionally,” Allsman said. “I think many people in the district probably felt the same way.” Marseille, who was born in Haiti, worked as a teacher, coach, and acting superintendent in the Lower Merion School District before becoming superintendent in Cheltenham.

While Marseille is Black in a predominantly white district, Allsman said she didn’t believe race was a factor in parental opposition — noting that Savage, the principal whose departure parents protested, is also Black.

“For me, it’s all about the results,” said Allsman, whose letter described the district as “on a downslide, at the hands of a few.”

At the July school board meeting, one parent presented a petition with more than 270 signatures, seeking a “formal, independent evaluation” of Marseille’s performance.

“Our school district has lost its way, and we need to get it back,” the parent, Arianne Allan, told the board. The petition — circulated among Wallingford Elementary parents in response to Savage’s departure — said Marseille was “not leading with our shared values” and had failed to support administrators and teachers, who “are being asked to work more hours and teach more students for no increase in pay and with no additional support, materials or training.”

Billie Jo McNamara, the head of Wallingford-Swarthmore’s teachers’ union, said in a statement to The Inquirer that teachers “have many of the same concerns about the district’s direction as parents and community members.”

Regarding contract negotiations, McNamara said teachers “have serious concerns about the administration’s push for changes to the school day schedule,” which she said would result in shorter lunches for teachers, a loss of prep time, and expectations teachers attend unpaid meetings after school, as well as repercussions for students.

Some parents expressed support for Marseille. “This is not new,” Rhoda O’Donnell said of staff turnover. She noted parent objections to departures in the autism support program, but said a friend with a child who participated in that program told her turnover was always high.

O’Donnell said she didn’t agree with Marseille on everything, but was impressed by him. When she’s gone to school events at 8 p.m. or later, “he is still at work,” she said. “The man is working his tailbone off.”

Of the opposition, she said, “They maybe just don’t like this particular person that’s in charge right now.”